Enhanced Publication Management System

Bardi A

enhanced publication  information system  digital library 

Enhanced publications (EPs) are a novel way to represent scientific research results by enriching the traditional digital publications with (links to) other research outcomes such as data, processing workflows, software. Literature shows that there are several examples of information systems devised for the management of EPs in specific application domain and use-cases: Enhanced Publication Information Systems. The majority of those systems are realised ``from scratch'' so that functionalities that are shared across disciplines and user communities are re-implemented every time. In fact, EP-oriented software is realised by integrating technologies that are general-purpose (e.g. databases, file stores) and Digital Library-oriented (e.g. repository software, cataloguing systems). The resulting products are often not flexible enough to be adapted to the evolving requirements of the community they target and hardly re-usable and configurable to be re-used in different application domains with similar requirements. Such a ``from scratch'' approach entails non-negligible realisation and maintenance costs that could be decreased by adopting a more systemic approach, as it had been done in the past with Database Management Systems (DBMSs). The approach we propose is the adoption of an Enhanced Publication Management System (EPMS), which is a software framework that plays the role of DBMSs in the world of EPs. The framework supports developers of EPISs with tools that (i) hide the complexity of the implementation of domain-independent requirements, (ii) allow the definition of personalised EP data models, (iii) support the realisation and configuration of functionalities based on the defined EP data model.